Showing posts with label Spy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spy. Show all posts

October 9, 2014

Your iPhone Is Now Encrypted. The FBI Says It'll Help Kidnappers. Who Do You Believe?

  Much of the world has been enthralled by the new iPhone 6, but civil liberties advocates have been cheering, too: Along with iOS 8, Apple made some landmark privacy improvements to your devices, which Google matched with its Android platform only hours later. Your smartphone will soon be encrypted by default, and Apple or Google claim they will not be able open it for anyone – law enforcement, the FBI and possibly the NSA – even if they wanted to. Predictably, the US government and police officials are in the midst of a misleading PR offensive to try to scare Americans into believing...

Why The FBI's Desire To Unlock Your Private Life Must Be Resisted

Eric Holder, the outgoing US attorney general, has joined the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in calling for the security of all computer systems to be fatally weakened. This isn’t a new project – the idea has been around since the early 1990s, when the NSA classed all strong cryptography as a “munition” and regulated civilian use of it to ensure that they had the keys to unlock any technological countermeasures you put around your data. In 1995, the Electronic Frontier Foundation won a landmark case establishing that code was a form of protected expression under the First Amendment...

March 31, 2014

Google encrypts Gmail; toughens online security

Google said it has turned to encryption to defeat unrelenting online spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) and other U.S. intelligence services. The countermeasure was announced by Google following recent revelations by fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden about more sophisticated hacking by US spy agencies. On March 20, Gmail implemented an encrypted HTTPS connection that blocks spying when users check or send email. Encryption generally prevents outsiders from intercepting a person's messages or documents. Experts noted that Google's encryption will make it very difficult for...

December 9, 2013

Facebook and Twitter Join Tech Giants in Call for Obama to Curb Government Spying

The world's most powerful technology firms united today in calls to curb government spying on internet users. Bosses from Apple, Facebook, Google, AOL, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo said 'it's time to change' surveillance laws and practices in the wake of revelations about massive U.S. spying on citizens. The rare show of unity by usually fierce competitors is seen as a reflection of the damage in public confidence inflicted by leaks from Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower. Earlier this year he revealed how U.S. and British spy agencies were able to...